Read Throat for Free Online Page B

there.”
    Dr. Olo guided my hand over the same ridge of flesh he had just touched. It was smooth, but …
    “See how hard it feels? That is the scar tissue. If someone did not remove the stitches, I would say it is almost as if they have been … reabsorbed.” He shook his head wonderingly. “The onlything I would know to do, Miss Emma, is to take a scalpel, so …” He pointed the tip of his fingernail against the raised place, drew it along like a knife. “… And see what we will see is beneath.” Dr. Olo laughed heartily. “Of course, I am making a joke. There is really nothing to be done. You are healed! It is a miracle! Please have a glorious day.”
    When my mom saw me back in the waiting room, she asked, “How did it go?”
    “Butter,” I said. And we left.
    The next impossibly weird thing came later that day. It had rained all day, so I knew the soccer fields would be closed, which was good because I wanted to test my leg with nobody watching.
    Besides, I just needed to get away, do something physical. Running had always been my therapy, ever since the curse had come on the scene. Running helped me to think, settled me out when I was feeling over-amped and crazy.
    I would have loved to run on the grass, but the fields were damp and spongy from the storm. So the asphalt jogging trail it was. A fresh mass of black clouds was threatening in the west and the light of the day was already failing. Well, failing for everyone else.
    It had been more than a week since I had really put the hammer down, so I went through a light stretching routine. Then I was off.
    Supreme
.
    The word popped into my head as I rounded the first long curve in the running trail. I was moving uphill and already gaining speed. My injured leg didn’t hurt at all. But that wasn’t really accurate. It was more than just a lack of pain. I had never felt anything like this, anything this good.
    I felt fantastic every time I ran. In spite of my size, I was built forspeed. But this … I glanced around me. The glowering clouds were starting to spit rain. Nobody in sight.
    Push it
.
    I lengthened my stride, intending to kick like I would for a sprint, the kind of flat-out running a person can only hold for a few seconds.
    Something inside me kicked back.
    Oh my God …
I was moving. Really moving. Faster than I had ever run before. It was so easy. But I could instinctively feel it wasn’t a full sprint. I was still in a lower gear.
    I pushed harder and could feel wind whistling past me now just as if I were sticking my head out the window of a moving car. Only unlike in the movies when someone is going terrifically fast, nothing was a blur. Everything was as rock steady as if I were standing still.
    I felt my heart as I ran. It should have been racing like a high-performance engine, but I couldn’t even feel the beat at first. There it was, about like the pulse you would feel lying down, maybe sixty, seventy beats a minute. Up to then I had thought I was blazing. But now I realized I could go faster. Much faster.
Try it
.
    I opened the throttle all the way, running as if I’d heard a baby crying in a burning building. It was like flying. It
was
flying, while still touching the earth. The black cloud above me burst and lightning shivered across the horizon like the glowing ends of a witch’s broom. Rain ricocheted against me—I was racing into the big fat drops so fast, they were bouncing off of me sideways like liquid bullets. It felt amazing, transcendent.
    I would have lapped the fastest Olympic runner on the planet three, four, five times already. I was something beyond human, more than human.
I’m a god
.
    I began screaming. I screamed over and over. At last I slowed,finally stopping next to a giant spreading oak. I sat beneath it and watched the rain thunder down. Checked the time on my cell. I had been sprinting like that for more than thirty minutes.
    The next morning I floated through school in a dreamlike state. In